


compass (like a heart)

by BannedBloodOranges



Category: Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Treasure Island & Related Fandoms, Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Ammorality, And the stone head's terrible jokes, Corruption (Of A Sort), M/M, Period Typical Pirate Attitudes, Silver is a bastard (but you already knew that), Silver survives Treasure Island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 10:36:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14103528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: Good or bad, all fortunes are fortunes.Long John never returned the compass. Four years later, by strange fate, Jim Hawkins unwittingly returns to him.





	compass (like a heart)

**Author's Note:**

> Characterizations and situations based on Muppet Treasure Island. Muppet characters are adapted into human background roles. This is for non-profit fun only.

_What a dirty love_  
_If i've ever tasted one_

**\- Sacred Heart (A Sailor's Drunken Eulogy)**

So he’s on his boat, isn’t he, in the middle of the wide blank blue of the ocean, and the Hispaniola has long since flung her anchor and left, and all that exists is the cruel silhouette of Treasure Island in the distance, and oh, he’s sinking fast, and the treasure is taking him down, down, to Davy Jones’s Locker.

But Long John is a survivor, and the gold and jewels aren’t going to buy him passage into the next life, or at least where he is heading, so he ditches it all and swims, quite gammy with his single leg, but he swims, mighty hands breaking against the tide, the shadow power of his youth barely enough to make it.

There on the shore, he chokes up salt and sea water, and that is when he feels it, hanging from his belt on a strangled knot of rope, the lad’s compass, all bent and grey in the sunshine. It shines differently from the gold, and he flicks it open, thumb smoothing the damp from the glass. The tiny arrow swivels in its axis, pointing north – back toward the ocean, back toward the empty space of where the Hispaniola was only hours before.

He’d managed to steal something, after all.

 

* * *

 

Long John is no fool. He knows there is treasure left on the island, enough to glut him comfortable for the rest of his life, but there be no boat and no means to reach land where said plunder can be spent. He fashions a new crutch from a fallen branch and kills the local wildlife and cooks it beneath the bold swinging bones of old crewman. He chews away, weighing up each option, and as per usual, he’ll have to rely on a wit and charm unusual of a man of his ratty birth. (His father a pirate, his mother a whore who died when he was age eleven; he hadn’t told the boy that. Romantic dreams were all well and good for the young and innocent. It’s only when you’re old do you realise the most wholesome ideals are the ones rancid beneath.)

He hides his gold and jewels in an old sea chest, and lights a fire, burning Benjamina’s hut and half the damn fauna, only for three days later for a ship to fan its white sails on the horizon, and for him to sit on the mouldy old chest and flash his smile, and tells a tale to the merchant man about capture and marooning by black hearted pirates, oh, and how they murdered and raped his dear wife, and what has become of his children, and oh….!

It is a performance worthy of charmin’ St Peter into the pearly gates, and they buy it, hook line and sinker, and they don’t even peek into the grim water logged chest for all the mist in his evil old eyes.  On the agreement of him being a cook for another month on their voyage, they make berth in a Caribbean port and Silver takes his gold and lies and finds another life, as he always has done.

* * *

 

 

Silver lives handsomely. He owns an inn, because why not – he always enjoyed the company, after all, he was by no means an anti-social fellow, and stories do bring in the maids and the sailor boys, pretty and tempting both. He does no cooking, though. Nobody’s cook. He eats oysters in fine oils and has meat that hasn’t been salted within an inch of its life, and butter and milk in his mashed potatoes. Fine silks and powder white shirts, only the best for himself now, and oh, the vanity he can now afford to spend. A lowly sailor who made good! Who doesn’t love that story, now?

A good story it be. He still has got fingers in everyone’s pie, oh so to speak, he’s a scoundrel through and through, still a cutthroat under all his fancy linen. He guards his treasure and his new life dangerously, possessively. So what if a few faces who knew him from way back when turn up, hey? Clueless Tom Morgan with his gormless face and Black Dog seething for a handout. Remorseless metal is the best way to cull wagging tongues. Shame it has to be that way, but a good business man must protect his prospects, even if it is at the behest of old shipmates.

(Gentlemen of fortune. He made his fortune; they didn’t. Good or bad, all fortunes are fortunes. )

Ji – the lad’s compass stays tucked into his belt. A strange thought, to think the kid carried it around for all his life, a basic sea tool made sentimental by a father’s gift. That the tin of its lid felt the warm, changing shapes of his body, child to adolescent to the ghost of manhood.

Shame about the boy. A waste, really. A lad as wilful as that, well, he could have been a good asset. Clever as paint that never peels, and as honest as any hero in those drivelling Bible stories, oh yes, _Jim Hawkins_. Silver had almost felt pride at how the boy had fought back beneath the firelight and stars that night, during his ill-fated “initiation.” But then again, also frustration.

Manipulation and affection are strange bed fellows.

Silver sips his wine and plays with the compass like a child, swerving it this way and that, holding it up to the light.

Maybe it hadn’t been such a waste after all.

If it weren’t for Jim, he’d been doing the Marshall’s dance right now.

Still.

A pity.

* * *

 

 

There is the boy, isn’t he, nineteen summers and stood by the docks, Smollett’s stamp all over him like a spank on a maid’s arse. Already an officer, by the looks of things, and as pretty any piece of shine he’s picked up. Silver watches from the pub opposite, resting his chin on his pearl tipped cane, a crescent moon smile on his face; yes, there be Jim Hawkins, cabin boy and mutineer and saviour, all rolled into one tasty morsel.

Boyhood is behind him, but not beyond him. His jaw has cleaned up into a nice jut, all tender faced without the baby fat, gold corn hair trimmed and held back in a neat Smollett approved ponytail. But those eyes, they have not changed, be so wide and wondering, the same blue as that blank bold ocean. The body is a man’s, the soul is a wanderer.

Huh. Not too much like Smolley, then.

He’s in trouble, though. He’s spiked every one of his crewmates with a dawdling memory, and as Jim turns to lazily look across the bay, as if by fate, his gaze locks on Silver.

It isn’t shock in the boy’s face. It would be funny to say it was, but it’s not. There’s horror, certainly – good navy men don’t look pleased to see pirates – but there is also hope, and pain, and a growing anger. Silver tips his hat, hauls himself up, and with a devil’s smirk, takes his crutch and limps away.

* * *

 

 

Will the boy come to him? Sadly, it doesn’t seem so. Silver isn’t surprised – why should the lad sully his one good reputation with the company of a pirate, even if said pirate is now an entrepreneur and inn keeper, wealthy beyond wildest dreams and getting wealthier – well, it be beside the point. He’d had a soft spot for the lad, true to told, he hadn’t carried that compass round his belt for directing his way to the shitter. But soft spots could be opened easier with a knife.

So what a surprise it is, when he ventures home that evening, to open the door and find Long John’s self-confessed soft spot currently sitting in his good inn, drinking his wine, entertaining his fellow officers with japes and games. Silver, usually such a convivial patron, keeps to his shadows and watches the skipper jealously through the bannisters. Why, of course, with a keen wage, Hawkins would come to the best spot in town, surely?

There are wrenches aplenty and the boy is reasonably well off and naïve, and so they buzz around him like flies. Jimmy flinches from coy caresses on his fine shirt and shoulder, and John can see it is more from shyness then repulsion, and more than that, the ratty strumpets can see it too, and John would praise them on their daring if not for the fact it drives off their more respectable clientele (they always arrive back after dark, pockets fat with change.)

It would be rude to ignore his customers, and so he barges past his whores and tells them in no uncertain terms to return to their balconies and backrooms. They pout and protest but know better to push his temper, and they peel away, all nice and obedient, and there be Jim, looking up at Silver with a jaw so tight you think he would burst the veins in his neck.

That should be all really, shouldn’t it, just a sly fatherly wink and a pat on the back, and a whisper of _you’ve done well for yourself, lad._ But bullshit that is. Bullshit for Jim be the only one who knows him here, for Jim could be doing better than lap dogging for the crown, oh yes, Jim Hawkins with his whip crack mind. They could have been a team, they could have been great, they could have been only out for that horizon.

He should be sorry for how greedy he be. Even with Flint’s riches fattening his coiffeurs like a prize turkey, he still wants more, still wants to stretch beyond what life has given him, for Jim Hawkins is a finer sight than most, and he be selfish and a scoundrel and so he turns the compass so the light catches it; a warning, an invitation.

Jim stares at it, then back at him, suddenly hopeless, then furious, then hopeless again.

“I trust…?” He says, his tone trembling, the Oxford education keeping his vowels in check. That be a lie, too – the rough old street orphan strains beneath it, and Silver smiles so wide and sweet it could be like they were old bosom pals. Why, the other officers seem to think so, lost in their games and girls. “I trust you want to speak to me, _sir?”_

“Why, only if Master pleases.” Silver bows his head, all mock royal. “I be very busy now, but at two hours to midnight, I am free to talk and sing to Sir’s hearts delight.”

Oh, can Hawkins glare. That he learned from no Smollett nor Arrow that be sure.

“Gladly,” the boy hides the hiss through the politeness of his bared teeth. Silver places his hand – carefully, mind, Jim be like a sprung bait dog – on the boy’s back, and it is the first time he’s touched him, since way back then, and he can feel all the muscles shifting there, can’t he, all that youthful anguish and confusion rolling in sinew and strength, and _oh._ Heat is in Silver’s skin, he can feel himself stirring, dirty old bugger he be, but no shame in that. Nor how Jim tries to shift away, so subtle in his betrayals of body, typical of a boy with virgin skin, and that thought is less than vitreous for Long John.

* * *

 

The boy was never this prickly. Why, you would have thought he’d betrayed him in another life.

“Come now, Jim,” Silver says, as warmly as he can under the circumstances. “Have a drink. Brandy?”

(He keeps his blade hidden within his coat, close to his heart. Hopefully it shan’t come to such unhappy measures.)

“Your best brandy?” The boy – nay, man says. He’s sat down at least, his naval hat placed on the table beside him, a defiant look upon his face. “Let me guess. Handed down by the monks of Belfast Abbey? Vintage 1737?”

Ohhh. A good memory.

“Why, that it be, Jim.” He pipes. “To toast to us.”

“I suppose it’s any old brandy.” The boy curls his lip as it is poured. Ha, not a drinker. Well, he can see to that, all in due time. “You just say that to make it sound grand.”

Silver only smiles, pleasant like, in response.

“Why Jim.” He taps his nose. “For something to be special, you must only believe it be somethin’ special.”

“Right.” Jim replies dully. Why must these clean and cut lads be so full of their own morality? It’s almost conceited really. But Jim doesn’t look like he’s hunting Silver with his look, oh no. The defiance is there, but not the repulsion. Behind those big rotten lying eyes Silver knows Master Hawkins is hurt. Why else would he be sitting here, unarmed and unattended?

The young man is pulling at his lip with his teeth. He accepts the brandy, cautious, but Silver pretends not to notice how the boy keeps on looking at him, even when his back be turned.

“Aren’t you bored, Silver?”

“Bored? Oh no, Jim. Bored of riches when I’d only known rags? No.”

The boy looks away then. Pity.

Was that be a shred of hope he saw, for a moment? Funny, that.

“Let’s not be bitter with each other, laddie.” Silver pours his brandy. “Tell me, Jim. Tell me all I missed.”

Jim scoffs.

“You missed plenty.” He says, and oh, there it be! The sweet salt bitter of it. “You were presumed _dead_ for most of it.”

“And yet here I am!” Silver extends his arms generously. “To listen to thy tales of greatness and ambition! Where have the stars brought you, Jim?”

Jim smirks – it looks mighty odd on him, it does – and swigs his brandy.

“To you.” He says, finally. “To you, always, it seems.”

* * *

 

He should have been proud. The boy talked of ships, of commissions, of promotions and uniforms that itched around the crotch. Ah, always knew the kid was smart. Didn’t know the boy was quite so pretty, nor so bitter, even as the brandy had danced in Jim's skull and had the boy left slumbering on the desk, head buried in the crook of his arm.

Silver had watched the boy from the window, watching the pirate moon turn on the clouds, fiddling with that wretched compass.

What luck, for a lad like that.

There are regrets, too. Regret in Jim, and well, regret in him too. Regrets not as deep as his Daddy running off to sea, the only pirate stupid enough to have a heart to love a sickly whore and their son, anybody’s son he could be. But regrets like how he can imagine the sun turning in Jim’s eye, making the blue brilliant, the iris small like a peach pit; that golden face turned toward the horizon. To know that faith exists for him, only for him, that he could not question the boy’s honesty for that would be questioning the boy’s unblighted affection. To be admired like he once was that innocent time, to know that familiarity and affection would bear fruit for them.

But Silver knows, oh how he does, that it be him who blighted that innocence, who turned the dark in Hawkins’s eye, who showed him that trust and truth was only useful to those who had the most power, the most men, the principles most profitable.

He should wake the lad, send him on his way, to golden horizons and brass buttons. But oh, he can’t, not for now, so he leaves him and drinks enough brandy to lay down any other fool catatonic. If his hand finds the boy’s head and stays there, well, it be the drink.

* * *

 

 

He has Jim against the wall, young man’s face pushed into plaster and paint. He’s not done it like this since he lost his leg, by thunder, but he is powerful enough and the crutch is hardy enough to hold them both. His fingers roll up Jim’s spine, pressing and massaging that back, bruising to near bloody, but he wants his marks there, yes.

The noises the boy makes, enough to fuel his blood into a frenzy. Unguarded, vowels slipping, moans hitting a tempo with each sweep of Long John’s hips. Untouched, Jim be, and all his tonight, his to take and plunder and corrupt, and whether the shadow of such an intention had crossed his mind on the ship three years previous, well, never had a lukewarm fantasy been so joyously realised.

The boy was too young, and he no monster in that regard. But now, with manhood upon him, and Silver rich and dangerous and Jim, well, wandering into his web with those wide, wondering eyes, well, who can blame him?

Silver wakes, his sheets ruined and a growl rumbling in his throat. For a moment, he can even stand to hate himself, but the dream is too good, too aching, to dislike.

The ache isn’t in his loins but sat somewhere on the left side of his chest. Indigestion, more like.

* * *

 

 

For seven days, on the roll of each night, Hawkins is there, at his door, and they exchange brandy and tales and oh, he sees Jim softening, but it cannot be, alas. The Sabbath day passes in grey sunshine and hah, soon it will be the noon that takes Jim away, beneath the stars and beyond. Hawkins has been given a ship – a worthy and rare thing, for one as young as he – and Silver takes his crutch on the mid afternoon of that Sunday, and limps out to see what shall carry Hawkins off into that horizon.

He sees the name before he sees the ship.

 **Polaris.** The name of the boy’s ship - **Polaris.** Silver sees it all, that single word painted in black on that proud ship, and oh god, the crusty old heart squeezes in his chest. He stands in front of the ship, the ship with Jim’s future on it, and oh, he be selfish and without any heart, but oh, he can’t. He can't keep him there, and how bothersome, this sudden weight of a conscience. The boy should run from him, shouldn't he, should learn all the things Silver cannot teach him. Silver doesn't believe in truth, or purity, or moral standards, oh no. The only people who can afford morals are rich men, like Smollett, or men who believe the bullshit that gold awaits them beyond the cold cadaver flesh, but no. All men can be bought, bargained and sold, all for the right price.

Except Jim, who stared him in the eye and refused gold and brotherhood - refused _him_ \- because he believed in honesty, bravery, and truth. Who'd hated him and wanted him both, and had dropped the whistle from his lips, and had pitied him enough to let him go.

An ugly thought – that the compass had come to him out of pity. He would have preferred fear, or manipulation, or even admiration. But there be Polaris, an adventuring boy’s dream, and here be the man who introduced it and broke it all at the same time.

Jim, in naval red, ducks just at the corner of his eye. He be sure he sees red on those cheeks, blossoming oh so attractive, and he would laugh and jostle if not for the ache in his old evil heart.

“She be a fine ship, Hawkins.” He says, offhand, not even sure if the boy can hear him. “When do you leave port, lad?”

“Tomorrow.” Of course Jim is near. Silver has seen, it’s all too late. “First light.”

“And your berth?”

“I don’t know yet.” Jim keeps his head down. Silver looks at him. They stand shoulder to shoulder now, man to man. “Wherever we find discovery.”

“Ah.” Silver laughs, brittle. “An adventure, the boy seeks.”

“Adventure is for children,” Jim says sagely. “Discovery is for men.”

“Did Smollett say that?”

It’s a bitter line, that. He means every word, and he doesn’t regret it the moment it be leaving his lips, but Jim does not flinch, no. He looks up at ol’ Long John, slow and sad.

“I think you taught me that long ago.” He says curtly. “Right?”

“So I did teach you something,” Silver pulls the compass from his belt. Jim stands back, confused. “But an adventurer like you needs a compass, hm?”

He holds it out, cupped in his palm. Jim flinches now, looks almost frightened at the sight of it.

“Long John…” He likes how he says that. Sweet, breathless. The boy shakes his head. “No. No. It’s yours, now.”

“And what do you mean by that?” he cackles. He takes a keen step forward, Jim a step back. The boy has a funny look on his face. “Isn’t this be all that’s left of your dear father?”

“It’s yours.” Jim says, firm. He cocks his chin like a trooper and stares gentle into Silver’s face. “It’s always been yours.”

And for the lad to say something like that, god be damned, all tender like, like a roast beef loin on a Captain’s table. Well, it isn’t his fault, he cannot be blamed for what comes next, for hurling the lad by the scruff of his neck and pulling ‘em close. Of course, it be out in the open now, sailors and whores about, so without a pause for breath he drags young Hawkins down the square to his establishment, and the boy, bless his heart, too shocked to speak, comes along all quiet like, mewling lightly below his breath, and all those rotten thoughts, they come to Long John.

They just about make it to the upstairs room. Silver can hop more keenly on his one pin then most bastards on two, and he makes good on that, for it seems merely a second has passed since he spied the star on the ship. The door slams and his patience snaps. He kisses the boy like a scoundrel, wild tongued. No experience here, in this Christian boy, who gasps in his mouth and scrabbles at his back, and oh, if these be his first kisses, then Long John can already feel the crack of Satan’s door warming his cheeks, his chest, his loins.

He gets the boy on the bed, filthy hands on white breeches, and tugs them sharply down, nails making groves on those young thighs, and oh, what a spoilt rotter he is, to having somethin’ like this, all to himself. Jim, with those wide wandering eyes, colour of ocean, peer down all frightened and fascinated.

It be a kindness really, he has not done this since he was a lad himself, but Jim be more special than most. He presses the cold metal of the compass into Jim’s inner thigh, making the young man yelp, and then he takes him in his mouth.

The boy almost chokes him, springing his hips off the bed, kicking his legs on Silver’s back. Ah, the noises Jim makes, all unbidden cries, made filthy by the fact it be the first time he ever makes them. And oh, ol’ Silver, to be the first sweet hearer and the first sweet cause. What a treat.

Of course, he needs to breath.

“Ah-hah…” He pulls back, wipes his mouth. A rash has attacked Jim’s face, his chest. “Steady, Jim-lad. Go steady.”

He lies his crutch against the boy’s hips, braces his weight down, to keep the lad still – with a shimmer of delight in his belly, he knows there will be bruises – and drops his head back down again.

Well, well, it doesn’t take long. Long John would happily have it go on forever, if only to feel the thrash of Jim’s trembling legs, the moans tailored especially for Silver’s mouth, but alas. Youth and inexperience, or maybe, well, he’s that good.

Silver wipes his mouth, gets on the bed, throwing off his coat and boots. Jim lays there, hand over his eyes, shivering as Silver touches him and turns him over.

“You’re young, aren’t you, Jim?” he pushes, oh so nice. “You can go again, can’t ye?”

It might take a bit longer for Silver nowadays, but he hasn’t had the right stimuli if tonight is anything to go by. He’s harder than a barnacle rock and god, how the boy trembles, well, shouldn’t be legal, really.

“I don’t understand.” Jim says. If he be resisting, there is no sign of it. He turns over at Silver’s command, lets his clothes be stripped from his body, even helping himself, with his fingers at his shirt ties and wiggling fully out of his breeches. Tears shimmer in the cockle whites of his eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“I think you do, Jim.” Silver lies his body down Jim’s back, uncorking the oil. “You be afraid, that’s all, of what is new and different.”

“I’m afraid of what I want.” Is the reply, and Silver would be mighty interested to hear the rest of it, but alas, what they both want doesn’t require words.

He fucks him like he did, once upon a dream.

* * *

 

 

In his head, Long John can think up all the right responses. _You don’t want an old sea dog like me. You’re young, you need somethin’ new and pretty. You see the world and keep me a twinkle in your eye whenever you’re in port, Jim-Lad._

But he doesn’t say these things. Just because he should, doesn’t mean he would believe it. Long John doesn’t say anything he doesn’t believe, no sir. Smollett was a gentleman and a weak-kneed prude. He be a pirate and a gentlemen of fortune, both. And Jim, Jim be a pirate’s lover and yet has the white washed heart of a Christ child.

But here he be, like the cowering yellow belly he was on that leaking raft, holding the boy so close and tight, damning each new change of light between the curtains. And here be Jim, stirring oh so light in his arms, naked and long and pale as a pearl.

“John…?”

Silver cannot smile, if for the first time in his life. He can only guard himself jealously behind his eyes, mouth tight, body tight. Arms tight, too tight. Jim shifts, touching his face. Ol’ Silver could die with the irony of it. Why, how he could laugh! How many maids and men has he left behind, several in each and every port, tales of love and wilderness echoing oh so empty in their ears? And here be John, being left behind, left to leave the young to seek adventure and discovery and him, oh, well him, to tell the tales behind his ill-gotten wealth in many old ways. To shrivel and die as a rich man.

How bored he be, how bored he be!

“John.” The boy tries again. “Silver. I have to…”

“Why of course, young Hawkins,” He says scornfully. “Ye must jump port and catch the tide. I know that, lad.”

Flint had a nasty habit of stranglin’ his lovers and leaving them bobbing in the sea. Or marooning the lasses he got sick of, ala the feisty Benjamina. Terrible commitment issues, did Flint. Oh, and Long John, so above it all, if not for now, if not for the fantasy of cracking his crutch against the face of any who even looked at Hawkins with a speck of desire.

Seeing how the boy had turned out, that would be impossible to manage.

Jim flinches at the chill in Long John’s words, and oh, he doesn’t mean it, not to you, lad.

 “I hate you.” He says. Silver smiles at that. “I hate you. Why must you make everything so difficult?”

“What’s this?” Silver kisses the corner of that mouth. “One fuck and you all ready to wed me, Mr Hawkins?”

Jim laughs – soft, genuine – but it breaks off into a bitter guff, and he looks away.

“It be the way of things, Jim.” Silver says, in way of comfort. “It be the way of things, unless ye wishes to change ‘em.”

“Come with me.” Jim clings to him. Oh, that need, so true in his eye, so like way back when. “We’ll go anywhere you want. Just come with me.”

“Oh, Jim.” Silver laughs. “Oh Jim, I be too old to return to the sea. Why, I betrayed her horribly, last time – she tried to take me and I fought her.”

He sees Jim’s face at that, and chuckles, and warps his words, just to be make out he’s being selfless, because if there be one thing John Silver excels at, it is making men hear one thing and want another.

“You go on your adventure, Master Hawkins,” He says, ruffling Jim’s hair, all father like. “You go and marry some plumb bonnie lass and tell your children how you once sailed with Long John Silver.”

Jim shoves him. Not hard, but enough to stall the lie in his throat, enough to see how Jim knows him, maybe a little better than he be thinking. Oh, smart lad, quick lad.

“You’ll be bored here, Long John.” Jim reaches for his discarded clothes. Playful, and a little cruel, Silver pushes them away each time the boy’s hand comes close. “You’ll be bored and useless and be stuck telling the same tales, over and over.”

“I have enough tales in me to top the Bible, Master Hawkins,” Silver replies breezily. “Why might I need more?”

Jim stills, chewing his words. He might have learned a bit by Long John, but not enough to beat him at his own game. Silver flicks open his compass and turns it in his hands. The dial points stubbornly toward Jim.

“What can I say?” Jim finally cracks. “What can I say, what can I offer, to get you off this purgatorial rock?”

“Hm.” Silver snaps the lid shut. “Let’s see. Well, first and foremost, I be no longer a cook.”

“Done.” Says Jim. Oh good, he’s learning. Silver circles his thumbs thoughtfully on the boy’s thigh as he thinks long and hard.

“I will expect to travel in style. Me now being a man of honest means, and of course, riches.”

Jim’s lip twitches.

“Done.”

“A nice cabin. A bit of culture, some silks and wine and figs. A decanter of brandy.” He pauses. “A big one.”

“Yes.” Jim fights his smile. “Yes, of course.”

“And no lowly rank for a seasoned sailor like myself.” He smirks, inching his thumb into Jim’s upper leg, his hand dawdling in Jim’s hair. “Why, I expect First Mate or quartermaster, at least.”

“Quartermaster.” Jim says, all too sudden. “Done.”

“Hmmm.” So trusting of his Jim, to put a mutinous ex pirate among the lambs, but even wolves can smile so sweet. “And I trust you be sharing my cabin often, Master Hawkins.”

Heat pinches Jim’s cheeks.

“I…” Jim thinks. Thinks too much, “I'm a privateer under the King’s navy, I…”

“Not a navy man, then.” Silver smiles. “I know every man on this rock, Jim. I could crew your ship with sympathetic types by sundown, if you can postpone one day.”

“Pirates.”

“No, Jim.” Silver laughs. “Those with grubby hands, perhaps, but no morals like the cutthroat braggarts I once sailed with.”

Most pirates of his ilk were retired, anyway. But so what if he managed to crew Jim from the Navy Men with the prying eyes and hard Christian politics? So caught up his Jim would be, he couldn’t tell the difference (and would come not to care, eventually.)

It isn’t like Jim is the sort to throw away all propriety for romantic notions of lovelorn pirates, surely.

“Fine.” Jim is unsure, but content. The panic in his body is gone. “Done.”

Silver slides forward, pushing his boy flat down. Soon Jim will be stretched out, sun toughened skin, gold in his ears and teeth. Silver catches Jim’s lobe between his teeth and pulls. The needle will go in sharp, it will, and the gold will hide in his hair like doubloons in a wheat field, flashing whenever the sun tilts her cheek his way, and oh! What a sight he be, a sight for Silver alone, a pirate forever and always.

* * *

 

 

The money he puts in the bank. My, what a lark! Him, making use of a public service. He stuffs his coiffeurs full, his pension a blissful reassurance on his brain. It be Flint’s final and gruesome gift – security in potential old age.

Jim be popular enough and charming enough that his fellow officers ask no questions about his new crew, nor his recruitment officer, nor how the wilderness grows in his gaze ( _groomed and governed by Silver, none else_ ) hungering for that horizon.

The crew, the ship _Polaris_ , the sea. It all be theirs. Long John wasn’t born with dry feet. The inn will keep, the stories will mature when ready for the telling. It’ll all come full circle there, that it will.

Except the compass. That be Long John’s, hung from his belt on strangled rope. When he holds it up to the sun, the dial clicks away toward the north, the little arrow beating tight in its eternal position, like the pulse of a heart.

 “If you will, Mr Silver.” Captain Hawkins stands tall, his hands behind his back, the sun turning in his eye, making the blue brilliant, the iris small like a peach pit. “Our bearings, please.”

Like a heart.


End file.
